PURSUIVANT (Fr. poursuicant, follower), the third and lowest order of heraldic officers. The office was instituted as a. novitiate, or state of probation through which ;he offices of herald and king-at arms were ordinarily to be attained, though it has been held that a herald or king-at-arms may be made per :altunt. There are four pursuivants to the English college of arms: Rouge erca.r, the oldest, so named from the cross of St. George; blue-mantle, instituted either by Edward III. or Henry, V., and named in allusion to the robes of the order of the garter, or .perhaps to the color of the arms of France; rouge dragon, deriving his title from king Henry VIL's dexter sup porter, a red dragon, assumed in allusion to his descent from Cadwaladyr; and /Joy/co/Us, named from a bitdge of the same monarch. There arc six pursuivants in the heraldic establishment of Scotland, known by the names of Dingwall, Bate, Carrick, Ormond, Kintyre, and Unicorn—titles which, as well as those of the heralds, seem to have origin ated in the reign of James III. The Scottish pursuivants take precedence according to seniority in office.
In ancient times, any great nobleman might institute his own pursuivant with his own hands and by his single authority. The dukes of Norfolk bad a pursuivant, called blanch-lyon, from the white lion in their arms; the pursuivant of the dukes of Northum berland was styled operauce, from the Percy motto; and Richard Nevil, earl of Salis bury, had a pursuivant called egle Ter& We even find sir John Lisle in 1442 making Thomas de Lanney his pursuivant, by the title of blanch sanglier. The ancient costume of a pursuivaut of the king was a surcoat, embroidered with the royal arms, and worn with one sleeve hanging down in front, and another behind. - In 1576 rouge croix was severely censured for wearing his coat as a herald. In later times, however, a pursui vant's coat is worn exactly as a herald's, the latter officer being distinguished by the col lar of SS.
PURtIRAYAS, a celebrated leg,endary king of ancient India. According to tradition, he was a son of the planet Budlia, or Mercur, by name of the earth, a prince renowned for liberality, devotion, magnificence, truthfulness, and beauty; but still more so ou account of his love for the Apsaras Urvas'i. This heavenly nymph hav ing incurred the imprecation of some gods, and therefore having been compelled to descend from heaven, saw Purflravas, and was seen by him. The king having, in con sequence, fallen in love with Urvas'i, she consented to return his affection, on the con dition that he would never suffer two rams, which she loved as children and always kept near her bedside, to be carried away from her, and also that he should never be seen by her 'undressed. To these terms the king gave his assent; but the Gandharvas, the choristers in Indra's heaven, and the husbands of the jealous of Pnraraves, instigated one of their tribe to carry away one of the rams during the night; and after he had accomplished their design, other Gandharvas came and stole the second rain. Upon this Purfiravas highly incensed, and trusting that the nymph would not see his person as it was dark, rose in pursuit of the. robbers. At that moment, however, the Gandharvas caused a flash of lightning to irradiate the scene, and Urvas't beheld the king undressed. The compact was violated, and UrvasT disappeared, while the Gand
harvas abandoning the rams, departed to the sky. Purfiravas recovered the animals, but could find U•vas'i nowhsre. Like one insane, the king now wandered over the world until lie saw her at Kurukshetra, sporting with four other nymphs of heaven in a lake beautified with lotu.tcs. Urvas•t, however, told'him to keep away from her until, at the end of the year, she should be delivered of the son with whom she was pregnant by him. He obeyed; and after Ayus was born, these annual interviews between Puraravas and Urvas't were repeated, until she had born him five othei sons—Dhimat, Annivasu, Vis wtivasn, S'attlyns, and S'rutityus. But the king, now longing for an uninterrupted reunion with his wife, Urvas'i endeavored to propitiate the Gandharvas who had caused their separation. Her efforts were successful; and they taught the king how to pro duce by attrition from the wood of the fig-tree, a sacrificial fire, and how to divide it into the three fires required for sacrificial acts. By this means they enabled him then to celebrate many sacrifices, and, by virtue of these, to be transferred to the sphere where Gandharvas and Apsiirasas dwell together. This legend is adverted to in the Vedas, and related with more or less detail in the ilfahelbhdralet and the Perdu as (see, for instance, Wilson's Trislin•u-Purtire a); it is likewise the subject of the celebrated drama of the Vikramorvaiti, where, however, the incidents that, according to the Purdn'as. cause the separation of Purfiravas and Urvas'i, arc not mentioned by the poet, her disappear ance being ascribed by him to a fit of jealousy, in which she trespassed on the proscribed bounds of a divine hermitage. It deserves notice, too, that in the draina, Urvas1 is transformed into a creeper, end discovered in that condition by Purfiravas, when fran tically roaming in search of her in the forest of Akaluslia—a transformation pointing to sonic affinity between this latter niyth and that of Daphne when pursued by Apollo.— The idea, however; on which the original Hindu myth is based—apart from the semi historical and fantastical detail by which it was overgrown—seems to have been sug gested by the (supposed) motion or wanderings (Purfiravas, front pure, much, and rams, going—from rag, go, move) of the sun (Gandharra, in the Vedas, also, being a personifi cation of the time of the sun), attracting or absorbing, and thus uniting, as it were, with the vapors floating in the sky (Apsaras—from ap, water, and sores, going, arising, hence " water-born"—bemg originally "personifications of the vapors which are attracted by the sun, and form into mists or clouds;" see Goldstricker's Sanskrit Dictionary, under " Apsaras;" and Urvas'i, front ern, large, wide. end as', pervade, hence "the far-per vading"—being identified in one passage of the ,llitheiblettrata with the river Ganges). A Greek myth of a kindred character is that of Apollo and Daphne, and also that of /o, according to the ingenious interpretation of it by prof. W. Forchhammer, in the Ver handlungen der Versammlung deutsMer Philologer in Frankfurt, 1862. In his Hellenica, the same scholar has moreover shown that in Greek mythology the ram is a symbol of +the cloud.